


The Purpose of Thorns

by ravensandwritings



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman - Fandom, Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Divergent AU, Earth-3, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 11:38:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13635519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravensandwritings/pseuds/ravensandwritings
Summary: Once, a conflict of judgment and a split second of hesitation cost a man his life and left Batman with a terrible burden -- someone else seeking his own kind of justice in Gotham City. He just happens to be terribly aggravating as he does it.





	The Purpose of Thorns

When Batman arrived ahead of the police at the Second Son café, he expected there to be a robbery in progress. Instead, there was a neatly trussed set of Two-Ton thugs and grateful patrons waiting for the police. Batmobile hidden in the alley, he ducked behind the café. Was this a trap? Easily bypassing the lock on the service door, he aimed to find out.

There was nothing waiting for him in the back room of the café. No ambush, no hostages, nothing. Though the kitchen door’s porthole windows, he could see genuinely relieved people holding on to each other, waiting for the cops to get statements and take out the trash. Nothing out of sorts, for a group of Gothamites already saved by a vigilante.

It was like he’d already come and gone.

He swept back to the car, leaving the patrons to the approaching police cars. They’d be fine. More than fine. They’d been rescued. Just not by him.

He gripped the steering wheel of the batmobile so hard he heard the plastic start to protest, cracking once audibly under his palm. He eased his grip, kicked on the motor, and slid out of the alleyway. Then he reached for the on-board communicator.

“Alfred.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I want all police band scanned. Have there been any sightings of the Red Hood within seven blocks of the Second Son café?”

Batman knew the answer. He just wanted to hear confirmation.

“Yes, sir. Seems he’s been rather busy this evening.”

“I told him to stay off the streets.” Gotham belonged to _him._ It didn’t need two men in capes dashing over the rooftops, getting in each other’s way. That was a recipe for disaster. Hood could ruin all of his work on a sting or undercover job by coming in with that crimson cape flapping behind him.

“I recall asking you to go to therapy instead of punching people in a bat costume, yet here we are, sir.”

“Is there a pattern of movement?” He refused to rise to Alfred’s bait. Instead, he focused on the thing he could fix: getting Hood off the street.

“Seems he’s working his way east, toward the industrial district.”

“Back to Ace,” Batman grumbled. Of course, he was going to that godforsaken chemical plant. It’s where they’d both failed. Of course he lived, mired the past, at the place where his life was altered forever.

Batman tried not to think on exactly why that bothered him.

“Quite likely, yes.” Alfred paused, the interior of the batmobile filled with only empty electric crackle. For a moment, Batman wondered if he had disengaged completely, but then his voice returned, this time with a kinder tone. “Do be gentler with him this time, sir. You could use an ally instead of yet another brightly colored enemy. I know you’d love to collect a full set, but Mr. Napier could prove valuable over time. With some help, and a friend, maybe.”

“I don’t need you arranging playdates with other vigilantes for me.” It came out deadpan, but they both knew it wasn’t far from the mark. Alfred could be right. The Red Hood could be an ally, and he likely needed support at this time in his life.

Or he could just go back to the life he left behind like he was supposed to.

He cut the communicator before Alfred could come back with a biting retort and downshifted, peeling out through the empty streets of Gotham and toward the outskirts of the city.

To the north east were the industrial parks that pocked the coastline like cankers, oozing pollution into the water and destroying Gotham’s fisheries years ago. Environmental protections were started to reverse the damage, but it’d be years before any of the decaying canneries saw a need to reopen for anything that wasn’t imported from further upstate in Jersey, or even from New York.  It was a favorite of everyone from supercriminals to the normal mob variety.

Indeed, it had seen the birth of two of his most famous failures – the loss of his friend, Harvey Dent, into the terrible Two-Face had occurred in these parks at the hands of one crime boss Rupert Thorne. The second…

Well, the second he was going to go shake down. Why couldn’t the man listen to sense? You didn’t get into this work when you had family waiting at home. You did this because you _had_ to, because there was no other choice, because you were what God and tragedy had _made_ you.

You didn’t do this if you were able to cope in any other way.

A rough gearshift later, Batman brought the batmobile from racing engine to a slow creep, its long black form lost among the shadows of tall warehouses and oil refineries. He crept up to one of the most distant plants: Ace Chemicals didn’t have lit neon anymore, but he could remember when its stylized signage cast its lurid red and green over the stacks that belched smog into the air. The green had given everything a grotesque pallor, like the building itself had clawed its way from the earth like a wretched zombie, and the blinking red only made it worse.

He should have buried it, afterwards. Bought it, tore it down, and leveled it. Start an eco-project to renew Gotham, create something _better_. New jobs, economic stimulus, something that provided much needed growth to the city. Every working-class job he made took a man out of jail and made him a provider, gave him new options, opened up futures for his children. Get to the root of the problem, instead of simply wander the streets looking for the product of it.

He should have done it years ago. But he hadn’t, and now here he was again.

Batman leapt from the car as the canopy slid open, and it automatically closed once he was six feet from the car. He slipped into the building through damaged door, one hanging askew with a rusted hinge that had snapped clean. He passed the lobby, the human resource offices, and the accounting department. No evidence of the Hood existed here.

Evidence of his quarry started in the foreman’s office. A cot, canned food, some neatly folded clothing, and a spare suit hung up in battered portable wardrobe. The foreman’s lockers had been ripped down and the metal repurposed into the ragged-edged calling cards of the Red Hood – knives that had been stamped at the heel with the Ace of Spades. It was the highest card one could play in certain games of chance and skill… and inextricably tied to symbols of death, the ultimate loser’s hand. Wasn't it too sinister for a man who purported to embrace justice? Then again, Batman knew well enough how cowardly and superstitious that criminals could be. Perhaps it was just another thing the Red Hood had picked up from his playbook?

Batman left the crude hovel behind and continued his search. With no boilers running, no heavy pumping equipment pushing raw chemicals—or their toxic byproducts—from one place to another, the place was unnaturally quiet. He caught the occasional scuttle of rats over corrugated steel, but beyond those tiny ever-present survivors, the place was stark in its emptiness.

Batman knew Hood had to be here. Hood knew _he_ was here. There was no question that they sensed the other’s presence, heard tremors in the walls. But this was the rotted out home of the newest of Gotham’s vigilantes – Batman would not expect anyone to take him unawares in the cave, and he knew he’d never take Hood off his guard here.

Making his way deeper, he came to the central processing plant. The huge vats where they’d collected volatile waste chemicals were now empty, home only to spider webs and shadows. But there was no doubt he’d been allowed to enter this deep into the sullied sanctum of the Red Hood.

He stopped in the middle of the walkway between the first two vats. If he went further, he would reach the remains of loose chains that had failed to support the walkway. If he went further than that, there would be a sudden drop off, where the walkway had given way right into a processing vat.

The tapping came first – off rhythm, seemingly random. It stopped, and shortly sounded out a beat he recognized: _Shave-and-a-Haircut…_

“Two bits,” he said into the dark.

“Finally!” the Hood said, echoing off the hollows of the vats. He was above, Batman realized. He was above, shouting down, using the vats to echo and distort the sound, denying Batman a chance to pinpoint him. When he was done being irritated, Batman admitted it was what he would have done.

“Why are you still operating in Gotham?”

“Why can’t you be in two places at once?”

“That’s not an answer, Hood.”

“Oh, it’s an answer alright. I’m just not singing the song you’re hoping to hear.” The voice was moving, Batman was sure of that. The Hood was going from place to place, taunting him like he was some sort of novice investigator. “Why don’t you call into the request line, try your luck? I hear WKRC does spooky synthwave of ’80s late at night, you might hear something that appears to your dreary tastes, Bats."

Molars grinding, Batman stomped down on the urge to say _don't call me that._ But that's precisely _why_ Hood did it. He knew it was aggravating. Aggravating meant off balance, distracted. Worse, it could mean vulnerable.

"You don't have to do this," Batman continued. Hood would needle, and he refused to engage. "You _shouldn't_ do this. You have family waiting for you, a home. Your daughter--"

"Has a new step-daddy getting ready for a wedding, so don't you try and pull _those_ strings." There was less force joviality in Hood's tone. "Raising a child alone is hard, Bats. He seems an okay guy, he'll take care of Jeannie and Duela. Besides, the take from criminal scum is getting thinner and thinner these days. Somebody's keeping them a little too poor to be of as1 a withdraw-only bank account."

"That's precisely why you shouldn't be doing this. It isn't a job, Hood. That money isn’t yours to take."

"No, it's a _calling_ , or a _mission_.” Batman could practically hear the man’s eyes rolling behind his strange helmet. “But it's what I've got now, isn't it? And you know, I kind of like making deposits at the 1 st Mob Bank of Gotham with my fists. I like to know my savings aren't going to waste!"

Biting back the urge to groan at awful puns and quips, Batman walked up until he was right to the edge of the collapsed walk way. He looked down briefly, before he cast his gaze up.

The Red Hood hung upside down, brilliantly crimson cape fluttering behind him. He gave a little finger wave, before he flipped upright, and then dropped down to to the other side of the gap.

"You need to stop." Stop fighting, stop treating this like it's all a joke. Justice wasn't comedy.

"Can't stop, won't stop." Red Hood lifted his shoulders and both palms in an exaggerated shrug, all the stranger for the helmet that obscured his head and neck. "You, on the other hand, could use a vacation. Get some sun, lay on a beach, bang a supermodel. Whatever it is you do after your day job."

"You don't have to _do_ this."

"You keep saying those words. I don't think they mean what you think they mean."

"Princess Bride? Really?"

The masked man laughed, quick and hoarse. "At least you're not a total stick in the mud, Bats."

"Do you really think this is helping anyone?" Batman pressed on, staring at Red Hood from across the empty space between them. "Least of all _you_?"

"Look, my options here are pretty slim unless I want to go for seasonal Miracle Mile clowning around or visit children's birthday parties for a couple of bucks." He put his hands on his hips, trying on a familiar pose for size. "This at least gives me a work out. How else am I gonna keep my girlish figure?"

"You have a family, a life to go back to." Why couldn't this fool realize he had everything a man could want in life? Family, a home, someone who waited for him to come back.

"And you don't?" The humor vanished, and Hood showed his razors. "You have a life, and a big mansion, and _money_ , Bats. We both know how you fund these little toys... I'm ashamed I'm the first one to figure it out, _Bruce._ "

"You haven't earned the right to use that name."                                                                                                                                 

"Earned the right?" The growl was getting deeper, and this time the Hood's movement were less fluid performance and more angered jerkiness, elbows jutting out sharp he reached up to yank the helm he wore loose. "I think I already paid the price for that and _so_ much more!"

He hurled the helmet across the gap, hard and fast, but it wasn't impossible to catch. Batman never took his eyes from Hood's face even as he caught the ridiculous thing. Jack Napier's distorted body—skin bleached white, sunken eyes jaundiced, he’d become some horrid parody of a healthy person, seeming to possess all the vitality of a mobile corpse. Crowned with green curls he tamed with some pomade and mashed under his helmet, he was the very picture of some sort of nightmare clown out of Stephen King’s imagination. Worse, he was totally cognizant of the fact of exactly how he looked.

"You don't get to tell me what I've earned, Batman!" Hood snarled. Yellowed, flat teeth were even fouler when paired to those stark white lips. "I made a back dive with three point five somersaults from the tuck position because you waffled on whether I was a hostage or a conspirator of the Red Hood gang, and down I went! So here I am, exactly what you _made_ me."

"I didn't make you anything," Batman began to protest, but the words felt leaden in his mouth. He wasn't lying – he _had_ failed Jack Napier, and the Red Hood took his place. But what he did wasn’t on Batman. It wasn’t his fault. "You decided you couldn't go back to your family, your _wife and child_ \---"

"And how is Duela going to grow up with Papa Bozo, huh?" Hood was all tension now, slender body tensed from shoulders to toes. "Daddy can only come out at Halloween! Is that any way for a kid to grow up?"

"You're her father, she'd love you--"

"And exactly how many kids do you have, that you're so wise in the way of child rearing?" Red Hood jabbed the air, pointing at him from his place on the broken walkway. "The one carrying on with you in the tights ain't yours, buddy."

"Robin is no business of yours."

"Does that kid even _shave_ yet? At least I'm a grown man." He rubbed at the generous length of his jawline, exaggerating his thoughtfulness. "I used to have all the hair where it was supposed to be, but these days I don't need a razor as often as I used to."

Hood's hands dropped, and he looked away for a moment. He was quiet, which wasn't normal. Getting him to stop talking in the field was a feat of strength – to have him just surrender into it wasn’t normal.

Batman took a step forward, right up to the edge of the ruined metal. The walkway trembled with each step, this close to the weakened chairs.

“I can help you,” he told Hood. “I have resources. Let me use them _for_ you.”

"Hah! That’s a laugh.” Hood didn’t have an ounce of humor to spare anymore, every word gone flat and grating. “You know what I think? I think you want me to quit. You don't want another reminder walking around out in public, let alone doing what you think only _you_ can do. Newsflash, buddy: I don't need your permission. This is what I got, and I'm going to be out there, doing what I do best."

"You fight injustice only slightly better than you did at stand up." The taunt was meant to provoke, but all it got him was a sour look from glaring yellow eyes.

"Well at least I found something I'm at halfway decent at, I guess. Anyway, this chat's been nice, but I have better things to do than be lectured by a guy who shouts "I am Vengeance, I am the Night" and then tells _me_ I'm being an unreasonable drama queen." He gave another finger wave, before he swept out a grapple gun and fired it at the ventilation skylight above the rafters holding the plant's roof up. It yanked him up, giving Hood the momentum to propel himself right through the window.

Batman didn’t hesitate to follow him, his own grapple gun up and fired within seconds. There was no way the Red Hood was getting the last goddamn word. He'd eat his cowl before that happened.

"We're not finished!"

"Aww, does Batsy need walkies? Come and get me if you can!" He was already sliding down the rusted roof and springing to the silo next door to the processing center. Batman followed him only to have him slide down the rickety stairs and leap to another building.  Where he went, Batman could follow.

Hood ran the very seam of the next building. Nimble steps kept him from sliding down either side of the peaked roof. He stopped when he reached the edge, only to turn around.

"Face it, Batsy," he called out Batman rushed after him. He took steps backward, right to the edge. "You _need_ someone to remind you what a screw up costs the people you 'protect'. That's what I am – reminding you that the great big joke of your mission is: you can't save us all."

Then he leapt backward. His hands briefly came up in single-finger salutes before they went up to complete the arching form of the  back dive he'd described just minutes ago. Batman heard himself shout _no_ as he skidded to the edge of the roof.

Looking down, he saw Hood hit the water just beyond the drainage pipes – falling back into the place he'd dragged himself out of. He didn’t resurface immediately, and between the starless night and the oil-slicked water, he couldn’t see Hood at all.

Batman waited for him to resurface, but he didn't. If Hood had learned anything after his dunk in toxic waste, he supposed it was how to be a strong swimmer.

He still had the man's helm in his hand. He probably had another elsewhere, keeping spares like Batman did cowls. Regardless, Bruce went back to the processing plant, and left it on the walkway.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he _did_ need a someone to keep him cognizant of the fact that he wasn't infallible. Hood wasn't ideal, and Batman wasn't sure his heart was in the right place, but... He was here to stay. One moment of hesitation had made sure of that.

He headed out to the batmobile, calm until he saw the dayglo yellow spray paint that'd drawn a smiling face across the grill of the car. No wonder he couldn’t find the vigilante earlier: he’d been outside vandalizing his _car._

As he got into the batmobile, Batman had to remind himself that a thorn in his side, even a well-intentioned one, was still a thorn.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So this was written for Fanbruary over on Tumblr, and was inspired by this little tidbit + art of a [BTAS Red Hood AU](http://snowflake-owl.tumblr.com/post/141589119709/red-hood-painting-this-is-a-batman-tas-au-where) by [Snow!](http://snowflake-owl.tumblr.com/)


End file.
